The computer implemented method and system disclosed herein, in general, relates to customer relationship management (CRM) contact channel applications. More particularly, the computer implemented method and system disclosed herein relates to an audio message driven customer interaction queuing system (AMDCIQS).
It can be appreciated that CRM contact channel applications have been in use for years, and have become a natural melting pot for traditional telephony customer interaction and newly emerging web contact paradigms such as electronic mail (email), voice over internet protocol (VoIP), web call-back requests, and text chatting. Of these, voice applications are of particular interest, but the other channels offer insight into the customer service equation as their service characteristics become germane to the method and system disclosed herein.
One problem with conventional CRM contact channel applications is that the service model for voice interaction is unsatisfactory even though voice interaction remains the channel preferred by customers and is still the most effective and proven channel for sales and support. Existing web-oriented customer service involves a compendium of textual and visual self-help material designed to deflect extraneous call traffic from call centers. When customers actually desire interaction on the web, their options include, for example, sending an email to a vendor, asking for an immediate call back from the vendor, text chatting with customer support agents, or opening a VoIP voice session with an agent. The weaknesses of each of these methods are enumerated below.
Email contact into CRM contact channel applications is managed on the user side through web-forms and/or email programs designed to help customers isolate issues for discussion, and frequently targets groups within the vendor using the “To:” address to aid in a triage of incoming service requests. In the vendor system, an email response management system (ERMS) aggregates the incoming email traffic, performs routing analysis over the email, and routes them to service queues. In a contact center, managers devise staffing models to address this traffic in addition to the more prevalent voice traffic that besets a typical contact center. Service level agreements (SLAs) for email contacts vary widely, from as little as a few minutes for an automatically generated “receipt” response, to days or weeks. On average, the response cycle exceeds 24 hours. The net effect of this has been to damage the customer's expectation for timely service on this channel best characterized as a text message driven system.
Web call back is a second common form of customer interaction on websites and involves the voice medium. However, the drawbacks of this approach are threefold. The customer needs to wait for a call back, which can take a variable amount of time. The customer frequently receives no notification of expected wait time, further undermining the expectation for timely or “worthwhile” service. Another drawback of this approach is that the staffing model required to support web call back is similar to an out-dialing telemarketing application. As such, because the calls are real time and have indeterminate length, the model for staffing a center to handle such calls is expensive. Add to that the expense of traditional call center infrastructure, and the attractiveness of this contact channel diminishes.
Text-chatting customer interaction shares some of the same weaknesses as web call back from a staffing perspective. The primary weakness of this approach is that the staffing model required to support text chat is similar to an out-dial telemarketing application. As such, because the conversations are real time and have indeterminate length, the model for staffing a center to handle such chat sessions is expensive. Another problem with text chat is that it requires text entry for users, which is a frequent barrier to usage. A third problem is the customer must wait in a queue before receiving service, further diminishing the customer's excitement impulse to establish contact.
Voice over internet protocol (VoIP) is another form of current customer interaction over the web and shares the queuing weaknesses of the approaches above as well as their expensive staffing models, since VoIP is connection-oriented in the sense that VoIP requires a real-time synchronous connection between two users. This means that users on either end of the synchronous connection must participate at the same time, unlike a messaging application. Additionally, VoIP infrastructure is expensive to acquire and manage. Furthermore, the quality of VoIP remains a problem for many users. Even with the quick saturation of broadband services into the consumer market, underlying limitations of shared internet communications without quality of service (QoS) guarantees makes VoIP somewhat unreliable. For these reasons, the adoption curve for VoIP has been slow, even though VoIP will ultimately be a useful contact channel. QoS issues aside, VoIP always necessitates an expensive staffing model and infrastructure to support. Regardless of network performance improvements, all connection-oriented service technologies require customers to “queue” before asking their questions.
Regarding another channel, there has been a recent application of instant messaging technology for CRM, for example, in the form of Twitter® operated by Twitter Inc., and other social networking services. Instant messaging allows users to send text to one another, and sometimes permits audio messaging. What has not happened, though, is the application of this mode of interaction for N to one (N:1) customer service for voice.
While these contact channel applications may be suitable for the particular purpose to which they address, they are not as suitable for voice-enabled web customer service. The net result of the above discussion is a pastiche of customer dissatisfaction and customer service organization frustration.
On the customer side, the interaction is marked by inconvenience, waiting, unnatural interaction paradigms employing text input and general technical obstacles. The result is diminished excitement on the part of customer, reduced patience with inhumane technology solutions that solve nothing, drive frustration, and ultimately, undermine the transaction itself.
On the customer service organization side, center managers are frustrated at mounting expenses from increasing staffing models, new infrastructure costs that deliver underwhelming performance, and burnt out customer service agents. The net result of the overload and expense pressure is a retreat from solving the problem.
Hence, there is a long felt but unresolved need for a voice message driven customer interaction queuing system, which substantially departs from the conventional concepts, and in so doing provides a method and system developed for providing voice-enabled web pages and local messaging client components in a general customer-driven messaging context as well as a retail or customer support context for allowing customers and web page visitors to utter questions into a local client component or a browser-resident recorder application akin to a walkie-talkie.
Furthermore, conventional exchange of voice messages between a sender such as a customer, and a recipient such as an enterprise or an agent, requires the customer to disclose their identity to the enterprise potentially making the customer's identity available to the enterprise for unfavorable usage or usage not contemplated by the customer. Moreover, in a conventional customer service scenario, customers voice their opinion via an electronic commerce (e-commerce) web page associated with the enterprise. The enterprise drives the interaction between the customer and the enterprise by inviting the customer for a discussion. The customer cannot voice their thoughts towards an enterprise unless the enterprise invites the customer to voice the customer's thoughts towards the enterprise. There is a need to enable and empower customers to voice their thoughts towards any entity whether that entity is prepared for it or not, and without requiring the customer to find the address of the target entity. Therefore, there is a need for a computer implemented method and system that allows the interaction between the customer and the enterprise to be driven primarily by the customer.
Hence, there is a long felt but unresolved need for a computer implemented method and system that enables customer driven exchange of voice messages between a customer and arbitrary targets. There is also a need for a messaging server that delivers the voice messages by performing address resolution of arbitrary addresses into valid enterprise addresses.